CORRESPONDENCE
Drugs in ancient texts
SIR - Bart K. Holland has argued for less
random screening of plants in the rain-
forests and suggested more studies of
ancient Western medical literature in the
search for new drugs'.
We would like to draw attention to
some studies where ancient texts have
been investigated. A most conscientious
study was undertaken by Hartwell at the
US National Cancer Institute (NCI) in the
1960s. Hartwell systematically searched
several hundred medical texts dating back
as far as 2800 BC including the classical
writings of Greece and Rome, for plants
used against cancer. The names of more
than 3,000 plant species were recorded2•
One problem in dealing with ancient texts
is plant identification, another is the inter-
pretation of the diseases. Nevertheless,
19.9 per cent of the plants used against
cancer in ethnomedicine had positive
results in the antitumour screening per-
formed by the NCI, compared with 10.4
per cent obtained from random
screening3 •
Discussing the history and future of
ethnopharmacology, Holmstedt has called
attention to the ironic history of
ephedrine, a well known 'modern' drug4 •
Ephedrine had been used in China for
more than 5,000 years as the crude drug
ma huang before it was introduced in
modern science in the 1920s. In 1975,
Majno 5 reported finding a reference to a
plant called ephedron in the writings of
Pliny (Ao 23-79). The plant was used to
stop bleeding and treat coughs, as
ephedrine is in today's medicine. There
are several European Ephedra species, so
Pliny is probably dealing with an indepen-
dent Mediterranean discovery.
We have a project dealing with Swedish
traditional medicine with emphasis on
written sources from the fifteenth to the
nineteenth centuries. Among these books
and dissertations are Linnaeus's vast pro-
duction, those of other well reputed
Swedish eighteenth century doctors and
medieval handwritten sources. This litera-
ture consists of approximately 50 books
and a great number of dissertations,
mainly from the eighteenth century. Infor-
mation on plants used to treat inflamma-
tion was extracted from the old texts and
these plants were evaluated in biological
tests6 • Active plants are being studied to
determine their active constituents.
In Materia Medica of 1749 ( ref. 7), Lin-
naeus suggested the use of Menyanthes
trifoliata L. in the treatment of nephritis
and rheumatism. A decoction of this plant
is still used to treat glomerulonephritis in
Swedish ethnomedicine. We studied its
effect in a model for renal failure, induc-
ing an inflammation. Rats treated with the
decoction had a three times higher
glomerular filtration rate after ischemia
546
than the control group 8 • We are now eval-
uating the pharmacological properties of
the decoction and isolated bioactive com-
pounds.
Hakan Tunon
Jan G. Bruhn
Division of Pharmacognosy,
Uppsala University,
S-751 23 Uppsala, Sweden
1. Holland, B. K. Nature 369, 702 (1994).
2. Hartwell, J. L. Plants used against Cancer (Quarterman
Publications, Lawrence, Massachusetts 1982).
3. Spjut, R. W. & Perdue, E. Jr Cancer Treatment Rep. 60
(8), 979-985 (1976).
4. Holmstedt, 8. J. Ethnopharmacol. 32, 7-24 (1991).
5. Majno, G. The Healing Hand-Man and Wound in the
Ancient World, 571 (Harvard University Press,
Cambridge, 1975).
6. Tunon, H. et al. J. Ethnopharmacol. (in the press).
7. Linnaeus, C. Materia Medica L. (Salvii, Stockholm,
1749).
8. Tunon, H. et al. Phytomedicine 1, 29-45 (1994).
Italian research
SIR - The recent interview with Romano
Prodi on Italian research, and the com-
ments on the National Research Council
(CNR) in particular (Nature 375, 620-621;
1995), requires a response to the state-
ment about CNR being throttled by
money "going on salaries rather than
research programmes".
CNR not only provides funds for the
academic community but also has its own
scientific network with about 2,500 full-
time scientists. I have served on a CNR
central advisory board for the past ten
years, and to my knowledge salaries -
most of them for those in the scientific
network - account for less than half the
annual budget. This is less than in many
industries, and in universities salaries
account for more than 90 per cent of the
budget. Funds for CNR and basic
research are about 20 per cent of the bud-
get, and funds for applied research admin-
istered by CNR between 15 and 20 per
cent. (Only 10-15 per cent of this goes to
CNR researchers, while 50 per cent goes
to industry.)
What has actually been increasingly
throttling CNR for the past decade is
that 15 per cent of the budget is devoted
to accommodation, maintenance, securi-
ty and other nonscientific costs. Of the
money reaching the CNR network of
more than 300 institutes and centres,
about 50-70 per cent is spent on running
costs. The amount available for each
CNR scientist for research is therefore
less than ECU5,000 a year. But it may be
for the Italian courts rather than the
scientific community to consider this
anomaly.
Franco Pavese
CNR lstituto di Metrologie 'G. Colonnetti',
strada de/le Cacce 73,
10135 Torino,
Italy
Origins of Frazer's
Golden Bough
SIR - I believe I have found the original
source of Frazer's Golden Bough in two
essays by the French scholar Henri Gaidoz.
This is not recorded in the current litera-
ture or in R. Ackerman's beautiful book (J
G. Frazer: The Man and His Work, Cam-
bridge, 1897).
Gaidoz was a student of Celtic religion
and wrote La religion gauloise et le gui de
chene (Leroux, Paris, 1880) andDeuxparal-
leles: Rome et le Congo (Revue de l'Histoire
des Religions VII, 5-16; 1883).
Gaidoz is interested in the two topoi of
the golden bough and Nemi's priest, which
are the Leitmotiv of Frazer's speculation.
The Scottish anthropologist probably never
directly read Gaidoz, but was influenced by
Ernest Renan's philosophical drama, Le
pretre de Nemi (1885), and Renan was sure-
ly acquainted with Gaidoz's writings.
Christiano Camporesi
via de/lo Steccuto 29-31,
50141 Firenze, Italy
New world, old word
SIR - You refer (Nature 375, 730; 1995)
to a meteorological event in Israel that
caused cool air "to collapse towards the
cacti at high speed".
You may be confusing Israel with
another country in the Western Hemi-
sphere, as the Cactaceae are endemic to
the New World and are not usually found
in the Old. A few species of Rhipsala occur
in East Africa, Madagascar and Sri Lanka,
but there are none in the Middle East.
Gareth Penn
131/2 Linda Avenue,
San Rafael, California 94903, USA
• Declan Butler writes: I am afraid that alliterative
licence got the better of me. D
SIR - In "At home in Zion" (Nature 375,
720; 1995), R. Boxman is quoted as saying
that the Hebrew neologism for electricity,
hashamal, amber in Hebrew, was chosen
after the amber arcs in the clouds seen by
Ezekiel during a vision.
Although I do not speak Hebrew, I
believe there was another reason for this
choice. The origin of the international
word 'electricity' is the Greek name for
amber, elektron. It was the physicist and
physician to Queen Elizabeth I of Eng-
land, William Gilbert of Colchester
(1544-1603), who, in his great work De
Magnete, published in 1600, called bodies
that attract in the same way as rubbed
amber "electrica" and the attracting force
"vis electrica" (amber force).
Friedrich Katscher
Mariahilfer Strsse 133,
A-1150 Vienna, Austria
NATURE · VOL 376 · 17 AUGUST 1995